A Beautiful Lie by Irfan Master

A very moving book about the relationship between a boy and his dying father, set against the backdrop of Hindu/Muslim violence that preceded the partition of India

Sparks by Ally Kennen

The story of a girl trying to honour her grandfather’s dying wish gets into all kinds of scrapes.

Quizzes for these are in the early stages. More news when we're about to release them.

Fast Lane

Recently we’ve been responding to demand for the non-fiction titles from the Fast Lane reading scheme. Unfortunately a significant number are non-quizzable with some levels having only one quizzable title. The reasons vary but include repetitive text and large chunks of the books taken up with experiments. As well as these issues, a common problem with non-fiction is the lack of plausible distracters. This latter issue dogs non-fiction particularly; it’s easy to come up with a question and the correct response is clear, but to make the quiz work we need to make genuinely plausible alternatives for all of the five questions.

On another note we’re seeing higher Book Levels for the non-fiction than for their fiction counterparts of the same level. This is down to longer, harder words used in non-fiction books. Expect to see the first of these titles in around six weeks.

Library of Doom: six new Titles

The popular hi/low series from Raintree has six creepy new titles to add to the existing dozen. These illustrated horror/fantasy titles are popular with readers, as we can see from our quiz usage figures, and it’s easy to see why: they are illustrated with full-colour pictures and also have playful doodles in the text. It’s pretty much impossible to get bored reading one. The newer titles are slightly longer with 72 pages, perhaps to accommodate the Librarian’s new assistant, the Skywriter, but the Book Levels remain around 3 points. (Search under Return to the Library of Doom or by author Michael Dahl.)

Keren David’s first teenage novel

When I Was Joe has been lauded in most places where teenage fiction is read and reviewed and the quiz for the book is now available. When I Was Joe, published by Frances Lincoln, is a story about a boy and his mother who go into witness protection after he reports a crime he sees. It won the North East Teenage Book Award last year and was nominated and shortlisted for numerous other awards and competitions.

Boys Don’t Cry

Another soon-to-be-to-available quiz is Malorie Blackman’s latest, Boys Don’t Cry, published by Doubleday. This deals with the effects that an unexpected addition to the family has on a teenager expecting to go to college but currently living at home with his father and brother. Expect the quiz in about a month.